Weekly Update

Dear Families,
It is getting very cold outside but I guess we should expect that for Vermont during this time of the year.  Thank you for sending your child into school with warm jackets, boots and snow-pants.  Thank you for also making sure your child has mittens and hats!  We had indoor recess for the first time in a long time today, but the temperatures were in the single digits.  Normally we go outside every day, so the children need the extra warm clothes. 
This is our last week before our holiday break next week.  We have many special festivities planned for the children here at ABS.  For example, Friday, December 20th, will be a school-wide Pajama Day.  Students can come to school in their PJs, but they have to wear regular shoes, so please do not send in slippers.  Since the children must wear regular shoes, Pjs with the "built-in" socks can sometimes cause blisters as the shoes get a little more tight with them inside.  Please keep that in mind as your child plans his/her outfit! 
On Team Harmony, we will show the movie "Polar Express" in the morning.  This is a tradition and the students love getting their tickets to "board the train."  We would like to have a small holiday party in the afternoon in our own classroom.  If you and your family can donate sweet treats, juice, cups and plates, we would greatly appreciate it.  Let me know if you can help us out.  I thank you for your generosity and kindness.
When we return to school on January 2nd next year, we will have a student-teacher join our classroom.  Amy Winter is a student at St. Michael's College and she will be with us every day until summer to learn how to be a teacher.  We are so excited to welcome her to our classroom.  More news and information about her will follow soon. She will slowly take on more classroom jobs and responsibilities and even teach a small unit.
As I think ahead to the next year, I am already planning for our Spring Reading Restaurant.  Reading Restaurant is an event when the students invite family-members to come and read their stories created throughout the entire school year.  We set up the classroom as a restaurant and serve stories instead of food.  In my class, the students also have a scrapbook, filled with special art projects and creations.  I have a few projects completed that needs to be organized into plastic folders and mounted on pretty paper.  If you would like to help us out with these projects, please let me know, and I can send it home with your child, or meet with you to explain what needs to be done.  These projects can be taken home and they do not need to be completed until Spring. I greatly appreciate your assistance and support, making our reading restaurant a true celebration of creative energy.  Thank you.
As promised below are some pictures of our studies in reading and writing.  Enjoy!

We are working on character traits in reader's workshop.  Here is our character trait wheel to help us think of interesting words for our characters.

This is our artistic representation of small moments.  Each seed represent a small moment story and the watermelon slices represent bigger stories as discussed in last week's post.

Have a great week.
Best,
Maria

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

We started a new unit in our writer's workshop this week.  We started writing small moment stories; stories that are personal narratives about something that we have done or experienced.  We discussed that when we choose a story to write about we need to think about why we wish to tell the story.  Sometimes, we tell stories to amuse, sometimes to create excitement and sometimes we tell stories to share our expertise (such as in our all about books).  We used many different mentor texts in our read alouds.  Mentor texts are books by already published authors that reflect what we are learning. We also explored these small moment books in our classroom and created a classroom anchor chart reflecting different topics that we could write stories about.  The students learned the difference between a "big" story (such as going on a vacation or a holiday celebration) and a "small" story (such as a hiking Mt. Mansfield on my vacation, or making pizza dough for my daughter's birthday party).  In the weeks to come, the students will participate in a series of lessons about how we stretch these stories out and make them interesting by adding interesting word choice, adjectives, dialogue, and pictures. 

The students continued reading in their reading groups this week as well.  We are in the midst of a unit exploring character traits.  In particular, the students are exploring what the characters are like on the inside, as seen through their actions, feelings and words.  Rarely do authors of fictional stories state what a character is like.  The reader has to figure it out, and as a detective, find the evidence for the traits through these acts, words or feelings.  We have added many new words to our vocabulary tree in this process as well!!!  For example, we have talked about what cautious, thoughtful, fearless and brave mean.  Ask your child to ask what other character traits we found in our stories.

Report cards went home today.  They are inside your child's backpack.  Please read these reports with your child, keep the report card at home, but return the empty envelope with your signature on it on Monday.  That way, I know that you received it.  Thank you.  As always, if you have any questions or concerns about your child's report card, let me know.

I hope you will all have a great and restful weekend.

Regards,
Maria

Special shares

We have had so many special shares in our classroom!  Last week, we had friends playing the keyboard and sharing artifacts from Thailand and Hong Kong.  Thank you.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,
We are in the middle of our unit on Colonial America and the children love to learn about our country's history.  This week, we learned more about the voyage over to America and the history of the Mayflower and Speedwell.  We also learned about John Carver and the Mayflower Compact.  We discussed the purposes behind the Compact and made a connection to our own classroom contract.  We also learned about Colonial education this week.  We were so inspired when we compared education back then and today that we decided to rearrange our desks to resemble a colonial classroom.  We also used our pretend quills in writing and math.  Ask your child to tell you more.  I have linked a colonial website by Scholastic below this post if your child wishes to learn more about Colonial America.  We will visit this site in school as well, but it has so much information on it, I wanted to give you an opportunity to access it at home as well.  Stay tuned for more updates on Colonial America.
We had another 4 Winds class this week.  This week, the students learned about rocks and minerals. Through small group explorations, they learned about different rock types and the rock cycle.  We ended the class with a yummy treat.  Thank you volunteers for making these classes possible.
Lastly, I wanted to remind you that we have outdoor recess every day and since the weather is getting colder, it is important that your child has a warm jacket, hats and gloves.  Thank you.

Maria

Colonial America web-site

Dear Friends,
I have linked a Scholastic web-site on Colonial America.  Please click on the link to learn about Colonial houses, Plimoth Plantation, and Thanksgiving.

Colonial America Website

From,
Mrs. McCormack

Weekly Update

Dear Families,
Thank you for supporting our trip to the Book Fair this week.  The children did a great job carefully selecting books and helped each other find books at the fair.  Some children even came prepared with a list of books to purchase.  Great idea!

As mentioned in earlier blog posts, we finished our team-wide workshop rotations on life cycles and adaptations.  In our class, however, we celebrated the unit by creating a Voicethread.  A Voicethread is an online tool that allows us to share our thinking in various multi-media platforms.  Each student has an online avatar, which is their self-portraits that we created earlier this year.  That way, we have a safe online picture. For this particular Voicethread, we choose to share our understanding of spiders, bats, insects, snakes and the Venus Flytrap by podcasting or typing.  I uploaded pictures representing each science workshop and the children choose which animal they wanted to share something they learned.  Please click on the link below and listen to what they had to share.  They learned so much and did an amazing job using this new digital tool.  Voicethread also allows anyone with a Voicethread account to comment, so I invited our learning buddies and our global friends on The "Flat Classroom" to respond as well.  Hopefully, we will get some comments soon.  Last year, we received comments from children all over the world when we shared a Voicethread on what it means to be safe, kind and responsible at Allen Brook.  This year, we created a video instead!
Here is the link to our science Voicethread.  Please feel free to comment if you'd like.

Last week, we started studying Colonial America, the Mayflower and Thanksgiving.  We have learned so much already.  We started by exploring different books about the Mayflower and Colonial life in partnerships.  We listened to various read alouds, practiced taking notes on post-it notes and created a KWL chart for our classroom.  Throughout this unit, the children will participate in many different creative projects and yesterday, the children created a collage picture of the Mayflower.  Ask your child to explain who Squanto was and why he is so important to American history.  Perhaps your child also remembers how many passengers were on the Mayflower and how long it took for this wooden ship to cross the Atlantic? Throughout this unit, we will also study many different words in context.  So far, we are learning the words pilgrim, colony, colonial and freedom.  Ask your child to explain.  Next week, we will learn about colonial schools, games and the different roles boys and girls had in society.

Lastly, I wanted to apologize that I have not noticed until a student mentioned that the pictures from our butterflies did not upload properly when I posted them back in late October.  If you recall, we had two days off from school, October 17th and 18th, and our butterflies had just hatched.  I had to release them when the children were on this extended break from school.  I took the butterfly pavillion home and released the butterflies in Underhill.  The pictures never uploaded.  Well, here they are.  Sorry about the delay!  The butterflies did well and should have had plenty of time to make it to warmer weather!

Have a great weekend,
Maria

Weekly update

Dear families,

Our school celebration this afternoon was a huge hit. Circus Smirkus came to visit and showed some of their amazing acts.  It was also extra spectacular because some of our former students were part of the performing group. Thank you Cirkus Smirkus for coming and thank you kids for being safe, kind and responsible every day so we can fill the school beehive. 

This week, we started the Kindness Challenge from Ms. Tatlock, our school counselor. She has challenged the entire school to do 100 acts of kindness in each classroom. We are writing down these acts on colorful strips of papers, which we hang together as a paper chain. In our class, we have already written 62 cards! 

This week, we also had some very special shares. One day, a student performed on her violin, and another day, a student brought in a Venus Flytrap to share.  Thank you.  Next week, we are on week 1 again.  Do not worry about keeping track of our sharing schedule at home.  We remind each other in the classroom every day, and if a student forgets his/her share, we usually share something from our writing folders or book boxes.  The students always help each other come up with something to share about!

Lastly, I would like to remind you about our trip to the Book Fair next Wednesday.  We will ride the bus over to WCS and visit the Book Fair between 1:30-2pm.  We will return to ABS for regular dismissal.  If you wish, your child can purchase books at the fair.  If your child can purchase books, we encourage parents to send in a small amount, such as $5-$10.  Keep in mind that financial assistance is available upon request. Thank you.
Taxes will be added onto the purchase price of the book.  We will discuss this in school, but it certainly helps if our children hear this many times, as the additional tax cost is confusing to many children.  Thank you. Some children do not want to purchase books with the class but choose to browse and return later.  That is fine too.  Students can fill out "Wish Lists" which they bring home to their parents to purchase later. Lastly, all the teachers on Harmony encourage students to only purchase books at the fair.  Thank you for supporting this approach and let me know if you have any questions.

Have a great weekend,

Maria

Launching Writer's Workshop Movie

Our movie from our Writer's Workshop Launching unit in September and October is finally published.  Please enjoy the pictures from our writing together earlier this school year.(The music is Chopin, played by the pianist Yundi Li)

Weekly Update

Dear Families,
We had a very productive week together.

In science, the students on Team Harmony participated in their last rotation of science workshops learning about animal adaptations and life cycles.  In this unit, the students explored spiders, insects, snakes, bats and the Venus Flytrap while applying next generation science standards, inquiry skills and problem solving.  The students will have the opportunity to apply this new knowledge in their own classrooms while writing an "All About" book on their chosen animal.  We started already in our classroom and the students are doing an amazing job sharing their knowledge as experts on all of these animals!  We look forward to sharing these stories with you soon.

In reading, the students continued working on non-fiction books in their reading groups.  They perfected their comprehension skills while applying their knowledge of non-fiction elements, such as headings, glossaries and captions, to name a few.  Next week, the students will start reading fictional stories again in their guided reading groups.  We will explore characters, setting, problems and solutions.  The students will also deepen their understanding of the author's craft and how we can synthesize information and make connections.  We are very excited to read some fictional stories together.

Our class is scheduled to attend the he annual Book Fair at WCS on Wednesday, November 13th.  We will ride the bus over to WCS with Ms. Crowley's class and return to ABS for regular dismissal.  If you are interested in joining us there, we will be at the Book Fair between 1:30-2pm.  If you wish, your child can purchase books at the fair.  If your child can purchase books, we encourage parents to send in a small amount, such as $5-$10.  Keep in mind that financial assistance is available upon request. Thank you.
Taxes will be added onto the purchase price of the book.  We will discuss this in school, but it certainly helps if our children hear this many times, as the additional tax cost is confusing to many children.  Thank you. Some children do not want to purchase books with the class but choose to browse and return later.  That is fine too.  Students can fill out "Wish Lists" which they bring home to their parents to purchase later. Lastly, all the teachers on Harmony encourage students to only purchase books at the fair.  Thank you for supporting this approach!

Have a great day,
Maria

Learning Buddies

We had a meeting with our Learning Buddies in Ms. Davison's class this afternoon.  This week, we are learning about what it means to be a digital citizen and how we use technology while being safe, kind and responsible.  We read a book about internet safety and shared our global "handshake" videos (our ABS video, posted and shared last week).  We also danced the Continental drift together, linked here.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,
I am sure you have heard by now....we have completed our movie and we are on the school YouTube account.  We are very excited to unveil our school song video.  We could not have done this project without the help of Linda Scott, our Technology INtegration Specialist.  If you see her around our school, please say "Thank you".  I have linked the video under "Songs" on our wiki, which you can also access here.  It can also be accessed here with this url:
http://youtu.be/xdWUjfx5kRQ

We are so proud of this movie!

We have the ABS Harvest party next week.  If you wish to volunteer and help contribute vegetables for the soup, please read the letter from our school gardener and let him know when you can come in.  Students must bring their own utensils for this special event.  It is okay to bring them in on the same day, but I encourage you to send in a bowl and spoon the day before.  We can always keep the utensils inside your child's desk.  Thank you.  We hope to see you there!

In writing, we continued working on our "All About" writing pieces this week.  The students also had a chance to use a camera and take pictures of their topic for our school book "A is for Allen Brook".  This is the book we are writing with our school librarian, Denise Wentz.  I will contact parents who indicated they were interested in volunteering in our classroom sometime tomorrow or over the weekend.  We hope to start this exciting research project next week.

In reading, the students continue to respond to the literature in different ways.  As most students still immerse themselves in non-fiction books, we continued to explore vocabulary and backing up our thinking with evidence from the text.

In this week's Thursday folders, your child brought home unfinished writing pieces. Since we already finished our Launching unit in writing, and started the "All About" non-fictional writing, the students cleaned out "old" pieces to take home.  If your child wishes to finish these at home, please do so.  This is a class filled with aspiring authors and we never throw any writing out.  Writing is a process that takes time to perfect.  We have a movie to share about this as well.  It should be done sometime next week.

This week's Thursday folders also included Dolch lists for 1st and 2nd grade.  I included these for you and your child because some parents indicated in our parent conferences that these would be helpful.  Some students are working on recognizing these in print; others are working on learning how to spell these words.  Some suggested ideas for your child to do, is to go on "Word Hunts" during reading time.  Your child writes down one or two words that he/she wishes to search for during reading and every time the word appears in the text, he she writes it down on a piece of paper or index card.  We also love rainbow spelling!  Ask your child to explain.

Lastly, this week's Thursday folders included information about our new "Bee Wear" at ABS.  If you wish to purchase a T-shirt or winter hat with our school motto on it, you now can.  You can even donate to someone else.  Let's Bee Kind!

Thanks again for supporting our learning!

Maria

Weekly Update

Dear Families,
This has been a very busy week for our classroom.  We started many new projects and we are so excited to tell you about them.

First, my class will begin working on a book along with Denise Wentz, our school librarian.  We just finished publishing our stories from our Writer's Workshop this week, and began our new unit on non-fictional writing.  Denise and I wanted to provide more opportunities for the children to write, research and use various forms of technology in a collaborative setting so the idea of making a book together was born.  The book is entitled "A is for Allen Brook" and it will include aspects of our special school in an alphabetical sequence.  The students have been partnered up and they will research and write about our school together.  Some students will write about our playground, while others will research our wind-turbine and garden.  Denise and I have created topics for every letter of the alphabet and all the children will receive help gathering information, taking pictures or conducting interviews with the "experts" at our school.  All of the information the students gather will eventually be put together into an essay, which will function as a "chapter" in our ABC book.  Denise and I will also have the book published in hard-cover format and make it available in our school library for everyone to read.  The children are so excited to get started.  I know many of you filled out my "Helping Hands" Volunteer Form at the beginning of the year.  I will contact you shortly to see if you are still willing and able to help us in writing and reading, because this book/research project would really benefit from additional adult help.  Thank you all for your continued support and if this research-project sounds interesting to you and you did not indicate that you are interested in helping out in reading or writing, please let me know.  Denise and I will start introducing the topics to the students next week and they will start using our ipads to take pictures for their writing pieces.

Second, our class is also participating in an online global collaborative community called "Flat Classroom".  Sharon Davison's Kindergarten class and Laura Dyer's Kindergarten class are also participating from our school.  Thousands of schools around the worls join together and share their learning together digitally.  We are now in the process of creating our global "hello, or greeting".  It is called "a Handshake" and we have decided to make a music video to go along with our ABS Song.  Linda Scott, our Technology Specialist, is helping us and we started filming today.  We hope to be done sometime next week and we will, of course, share the video with you.

This week in science, students continued learning about spiders, bats,and other interesting plants and animals in our life cycle and adaptations workshops.  I hope you saw some of their wonderful creations this afternoon.  We also continued learning about the weather.  Some words we explored this week: forecast, weather front, meteorologist.

In writing, the students finished publishing their first pieces.  We will share these at our conferences.  We began writing "All About" books this week.  All About books introduce the students to non-fiction writing without the pressure of having to do research as they are encouraged to write about a topics they already know a lot about.  For example, some students write all about soccer. The book might have a chapter on rules, equipment and how to kick the ball.  The students also explore how to create a table of contents, labeled pictures and a glossary.

Lastly, the students learned how to access books on our wiki today.  This is very familiar to the second graders, but new to the first graders.  Please send in a pair of head-phones for your child to use in our classroom for listening to books online.  Thank you.

Have a great day tomorrow and a wonderful weekend.
Regards,
Maria

Learning Buddies today

We met with our learning buddies today in Ms. Davison's class.  We shared our reading responses to the book "Lily's purple plastic purse" by Kevin Henkes and read some books together.  Here are some pictures from our meeting today.  Isn't it great to see our young learners engaged in active reading together, learning from each other?  I am so proud to know these kids!

Weekly Update

Dear Families,
I hope you are all finding time to go outside and enjoy this beautiful weather!  Before we know it, it will be dark and cold.

We started our year-long study of the weather a couple of weeks ago.  The students started by working together in small groups creating posters representing our 4 seasons.  We also learned why we have seasons.  Ask your child to explain.  We will continue studying different aspects of weather and climate in the next few weeks, integrating our science goals into reading and writing as well.  We will record daily weather trends as well and graph our results.

The students are in the midst of publishing in our writer's workshop now.  They have learned that good authors always carefully select their own best piece for publication.  We find our own best pieces by reading all the ones we have inside our writing folders.  After we read and select a piece, we start the revision process.  The students check finger-spacing, trick word spelling and grammatical rules.  They also check to make sure the words and the pictures match up and make sense.  The last step in our publishing process is to create a cover for our book.  The students looked at different books to get ideas what different book covers look like, but ultimately they are encouraged to use their own creative talents to create covers that make sense for their stories.

In reading, the students continued their work in their small guided reading groups, or Book Clubs as we like to call them.  Depending upon their reading need, the children receive targeted instruction helping them establish solid reading strategies.  I hope you and your child have an opportunity to read our books every night.  Thank you for your continued support reading and writing with your children.  I love reading what's written in our logs!  Don't forget to return the red homework folders (and reading logs) on Thursdays!  Thank you.

In math, first grade mathematicians focused upon chunking numbers by 5s and 10s.  We did many collaborative games and activities based upon the number line.  For example, we played a game called "Guess my number" and searched for the number before and after a particular number.  Ask your child to explain.  The students also started exploring first grade math problem solving.  We will show these at our conferences when we meet.

Thank you for signing up on the goolge doc for conferences.  Please do not hesitate to let me know if you and your family needs another time slot.  I look forward to meeting with all of you.

Lastly, I was hoping you could send in ear-buds or head-phones for your child to use at school.   It is more sanitary for the children to have their own ear-buds.  Please send in a set with your child next week.  Let me know if this is challenging for you and your family and I will help you get them.  I found excellent ear-buds at Walmart for just a few dollars.  In the past, parents have sent in ear-buds in a small ziplock bag with their child's name on it.  Thank you.

Thank you and have a great day tomorrow!

Maria

Weekly update

Dear families,
We had another busy week in our classroom.
We filled our buzzy-jar again.  The students continues to demonstrate that they understand what it means to be safe, kind and responsible here at ABS.  This time, the students wanted to have lunch in the classroom.  We had so much fun eating together and sharing stories.  See the pictures below.
This week, we also had our first 4WInds class.  We learned about the sun.  We learned that we need the sun for heat and light.  We also learned that the earth rotates around the sun every day, every year. We used sidewalk chalk to draw our shadows and then watched how our shadows moved as the earth had rotated more.  We also used a sun-heated oven to melt chocolate chips.  Fun, yummy and informative.  Thank you parents for volunteering for these terrific classes.
In writing this week, the students continued working on creating different kinds of stories.  We started exploring small moment personal narratives.  The students writes about something that they have experienced and stretch it out. They learned to tell their stories over 3 fingers, with a clear beginning, middle and end.
In reading, the students continued work in their guided reading groups.  Thank you for reading with your child every week and for bringing back our book bags on time.  Other students at our school use these books as well, so we want to return them on time.  Thanks.
In math, first grade mathematicians explored chunking their numbers in groups of 10.  We used rekenreks, 10frames and unifix cubes to help us create number sentences of 10 and some more.  Please ask your child to use his/her math hands to show you a number between 10 and 20.  Ask your child to explain different strategies for solving addition problems, such as 4+5 or 12+3.

Have a great day tomorrow and a terrific weekend.

Maria

Friday workshops

As you might recall, we have Friday workshops on Team Harmony. This is a time for the students to engage in learning opportunities in mixed with friends from all four classrooms on our teams. The students sign up for these workshops every week.  This week, I offered a workshop on recycled art; finding creative ways to reuse old and discarded materials in art.  The students had access tools paper tubes, pipe cleaners and old computer parts among other things. Here are some pictures.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,
It is hard to believe but another week is almost done!  Thank you to those of you who attended Curriculum Night last night.  I hope our information regarding our curricular programs was helpful and informative.  For those of you who could not attend, I assure you that my blog posts include information about our curriculum as I share the learning we do on our team.  If you are interested you can also visit our Family Resource Page on our team web-site to access online resources of the programs we use at ABS.  Thank you.
This week in reader's workshop, the students continued to read independently and in small guided reading groups. Books went home in our students book bags again on Monday.  We hope to have those back on Thursdays along with the red homework folder.  If your child wants an additional day to complete reading or math homework, that is fine too.  Please return the two items by Friday so we can get ready and pack up for the next week's book selection.  I hope your child feels more confident reading and writing at home.  I appreciate your thoughtful comments and observations.  They are very helpful to me.  Thank you.  Let's keep the conversation going!
In reading this week, the students also learned more about stamina.  This is a familiar topic to most students.  Stamina in reading means the ability and willingness to read independently for longer periods of time.  In our classroom, we discussed what we can do to help develop reading stamina.  Some of the things we explored were reading a variety of just right books, partner read, taking notes on post-it notes or index cards, doing word hunts/graphs and setting daily personal goals for reading.  The students do a fantastic job reading!  It is clear they love reader's workshop!
In writing this week, the students continued to create stories of different nature.  We read the book "Wemberly Worried" by Kevin Henkes and talked about how we can create stories about strong feeling we have had.  The students loved this idea.  Some students decided to write stories of the first time the rode a bike and felt very happy, while others choose stories about feelings of nervousness, such as the first day of school or losing a first tooth.  Next week, we will explore stories about people we admire and then learn about the publishing process.
Next week, we will begin sharing in our classroom.  I sent home a sharing schedule in your child's Thursday folder.  We rotate through the kids every two weeks.  This means that approximately two students share each day.  Next week will be week 1 and then the following week will be week 2 and so on.  If this sounds confusing, please do not worry.  We keep track of our schedule in class and the students know when they share.  Sharing is an opportunity for us to get to know each other better and it is not supposed to be a high stress situation for your child.  If he/she feels worried or anxious about sharing, let me know. We share in our morning meeting.  Some children like to bring in objects or pictures from home to share, and that is great, but it is equally fine to choose to read a book from your book box that you really like.  Last year, for example, the children loved to share their own written pieces from class.  I encourage this type of sharing as we emphasize the learning we do together rather than toys and video-games.  Thank you for encouraging your child to share stories and experiences rather than objects!

I hope you have a great day tomorrow and a wonderful weekend.
Regards,
Maria

School-wide celebration

We filled the bee-hive already at ABS! We celebrated with an assembly in the gym where we created a large school-wide dot in honor of International Dot Day and sand the song "Do the honey bee dance" together.  Let's continue being safe, kind and responsible!

International Dot Day

We celebrated International Dot Day on Monday with our school.  International Dot Day was created by the author and illustrator Peter Reynolds and based on his widely successful book "The Dot".  The book tells the story of Vashti, who gains the confidence to make her mark in the world and trust her own abilities.  It is a very inspiring book.  We went to the library smartboard and read the book together with our learning buddies in Ms. Davison's Kindergarten class.  We also solved many interactive and collaborative projects based upon the book together.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,
We have almost finished another week of learning in our classroom and we have so much to share with you this week.
Before I share, I want to remind all parents that our ABS Curriculum Night is scheduled for the 18th of September at 6:30pm.  We hope you can join the teachers in Team Harmony and learn about our year-long curricular goals, units of study and academic programs.  Thank you.
Picture Day is also coming up soon.  It is scheduled for the 17th of September.  Please return your child's picture order form if you are interested in individual portraits.  Thank you.
This week, the students continued learning about the writing process in our writer's workshop classes.  We learned that good authors always re-read their own writing before adding more details to the words or the pictures.  We also learned that good authors sometimes put an "old" piece aside and start a new one.  We continued adding topics and possible story-ideas to our lists inside our writing folders.  We explored various topics through our read alouds.  For example, we read a non-fiction book about kittens and and we also read several fictional stories that symbolized personal narratives and small moment stories.  In class, the students are still exploring various writing styles.  Next week, we will learn more about the editing/revision stages and finally the publishing stage.
In reading, the students continued working on finding "just right" books for their book boxes and for home in our library.  The students are encouraged to think about what makes a successful reading experience.  Sometimes, we might want to look at only the pictures, but sometimes we need to read the book so knowing hoe to select a "just right" book will help us feel successful as readers.  Please ask your child about the books he/she is taking home from the library.  Next week, I will ask the students to bring one "Just right" book and one choice book.  This week, many students brought two choice books.  It is a perfect opportunity to have this conversation with your child.  Thank you for supporting independence in reading!
We continued our scientific explorations this week.  We studied sunflowers this week.  We read a book about the stages of a sunflower's life cycle and then explored the flower and the seed.  We used our science journals and drew pictures and wrote words about what we discovered.  The students are encouraged to use their senses when writing/drawing about science.  We ended our science inquiry with planting a seed in soil.  The children planted a seed each, which they took home today.  I realize this is late in the season and I told the children that it is probably too late to plant these sunflower seeds outside, but we decided that perhaps we have enough sunlight to keep it inside and watch it grow.  Thank you for helping our scientists continue to watch this process.  We also collected seeds from a sunflower that was donated to the classroom by Jaden.  We filled 4 ziplock bags!!!  We will save these for the Spring, when we will pot them again and plant them outside.  We will also estimate and count how many seeds we found inside just one sunflower.  Thank you Jaden!

This week, the students and I also finished our Classroom Contract. We discussed what it means to be safe, kind and responsible at our school and we wrote our ideas down on a big contract for our year together.  We all signed it.  Here is a picture.

Lastly, we created our big murtal symbolizing our theme for the year, "Traveling around the world-join our Friend-SHIP."  We will learn about different cultures and languages all around the world through classroom visits, books, and technology. We started using twitter a few days ago, but will slowly start using it more.  If you wish to follow us, our name is @McCormackPals.  We will also continue to learn Spanish from Mrs. D and connect with classrooms around the world through other means.  If you wish to share something from another culture with us, please let us know.  We would love to have you visit us!  Thank you.

Have a great rest of the week and weekend.  Thank you for supporting your child's learning at home.

Best,
Maria

Learning Spanish from Mrs. D

We are so fortunate to have Mrs D on our team.  She helps us every day in math and literacy.  She also visits our class room to teach us Spanish.  She lived in South America for many years and she loves to share her knowledge and experiences with us.  Thank you,Mrs. D.  Today, the students learned how to say hello in Spanish and how to count to 10.  Her visits to our classroom are part of a broader theme entitled Traveling Around the World, when we connect with people and classrooms through various means and technological tools.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,
It is hard to believe but we have almost finished our 2nd week of school.  It feels like fall now too with cooler temperatures outside.  Thank you for sending your child to school with long-sleeved jackets or sweatshirts.  We have recess every day and the cooler temperatures and winds chill.

In writer's workshop, the students started to decorate their writing folders. We keep our writing inside these folders until we are ready to publish our pieces.  We follow a workshop model at ABS and the students learn that writing is a process, a process that begins with an idea.  This idea is then carefully planned out and put into words and pictures.  After the initial stages of our writing, the students re-read their own writing pieces and make revisions and edits their pieces.  Sometimes we also consult with our editor partners who help us make our pieces even better.  After the students have completed these steps, they choose a piece to publish.  This process takes time to learn and we will explore this over the next few weeks.  This week, the students and I discussed how we come up with interesting ideas for writing.  We brainstormed writing topics together and the students also received a list of these topics that they keep inside their folders for future use.  We will add to this list as our topics as authors grow.  We read the book "Library Mouse" by D. Kirk.  We learned that we are all authors.  We also learned that good authors write about things they know.  So, this week we started writing stories about things we already know something about.  For example, some students are writing stories about their pets or a special trip they took this summer.  Other students are writing books about a sport they play or special hobbies they have.  We cannot wait to share these with you later.   
In reading, we started reading groups this week.  We call our guided reading groups Book Clubs.  On Monday, your child will bring home his/her Book Bag for the first time.  Your child will also bring home his/her Homework folder.  Team Harmony teachers are asking students to read and write every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  We also hope this will not take more than 20 minutes.  In reading this week, the students and I started discussing what a "Just Right" book is.  We explored different strategies for figuring this out, such as looking at the cover, looking at the words and reading some of the words.  We also learned that if we cannot read five or more words on a page, that book might not be a "just right" book for us.  We also discussed that our needs as readers are different.  Sometimes we might want to look at pictures to help us in another subject, and sometimes a "just right" book might be different because we already know about that particular topic. When you read with your child at home, please engage in this conversation.  Ask your child why the book he/she took home is a "just right" book, or not.  Learning how to pick good books help us make sense of reading; and after all, reading must make sense to us.  If you have any questions about homework, reading logs or books, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Today, your child brought home information about our school picture day.  Please read it carefully and return it to school if you are interested in having pictures taken.  Thank you.
Today, some children also brought home a crayon cupcake (our walkers and Part 2 students forgot to get theirs so they will get them tomorrow).  This cupcake is not for eating, of course, but rather for coloring.  We are doing a year-long project on recycling, entitled "Recycling build character".  We are collecting soda and water bottle caps in our classroom, old crayons and marker caps.  Some children have already brought in extras from home.  Thank you.  My daughter Emilie and I baked the old crayon pieces over the weekend and gave the students their crayon cupcakes today.  If you are interested in doing this at home, you can easily google it, but we broke the crayons into small pieces, took the papers off and put them into mini-cupcakes.  We baked the crayons for 10-15 minutes at 250 degrees.  Have fun and be creative with your shapes!!  I look forward to hearing about these projects at home!
We have filled our Buzzy Jar twice already!  The students are showing safe, kind and responsible behavior every day and I am so proud of them!  Last week, we had a dance party/sing-a-long in our classroom.  If you wish to listen to some of our favorite songs at home, I have listed the on our wiki, under "Songs".  It can also be accessed here.
Lastly, I wanted to share with you that we have already had a student reporter in the Bluie & Gold, our school newspaper.  The Blue & Gold is linked on the school web-site, but it can also be accessed in this blog's sidebar.  Click here if you wish to read what the students (and teachers) said about coming back to school. 
Have a great rest of the week and weekend.

Maria

Using ipads in writer's workshop

The students have learned about the importance of adding details to our pictures when we are writing a story.  Most of the time, the pictures match the words,but sometimes the pictures add details to the story and tell more about the events, the characters or the setting.  We read the books The crayonbox that talked by Shane DeRolf and My crayon talk by Patricia Hubbard.  Using iPads, the students explored drawing pictures using only one cool or before recreating the same picture using many different colors.  Guess which picture we liked better?  We will share some of our creations later, so stay tuned.